It's been a very long year plus since I last used this journal. I'm tired and anxious and depressed, and tonight isn't particularly spectacular as far as nights go. I guess I'll start with an overall summary of life right now, and then future entries can be about present issues and happenings.

I have my own apartment now. I spent September to April living with Shannon, and May through June living with two people I was in a relationship with. I ended that relationship in July because I did not share their feelings, and that's that.

My father was diagnosed with tonsil cancer in June, and has been undergoing a series of surgeries and just started radiation treatments. His prognosis is very positive, but the news triggered intense depression and anxiety for me, and I've been struggling with it for the past few months.

My doctor wants me to exercise to treat the above. I'm working on it, but the only thing I can barely work up the motivation to do is swim laps at my local rec center. It's better than nothing, I guess, but yeah.

I work at a department store. I began at the discount version, selling menswear, in September, and was promoted to the full line selling women's designer clothing in April. I don't like my current position and I'm trying to move to a position that keeps me mentally stimulated and isn't constantly in jeopardy due to the fact that nobody buys designer in the current economy.

I have two cats, one that was given to me by Shannon on Election Day 2012, a calico named Lacie, and a little black and white kitten I adopted in July named Vivi. They love each other very dearly but I'm still trying to earn Vivi's trust for physical affection after I had to give her medicine and water by force during her first week with me, and she's still wary of me because of that.

I'm starting to sew more, when I can, and I've been taking on cosplay commissions for a little extra cash. Eventually I'll begin working on my own stuff again, but for now it's a sweatshop of Persona costumes.

I don't really know what else there is to say right now. Kind of just a blank, empty thing emotionally right now. Going to try to blog more regularly for my own sake.

Been dying for the last few months, again. Going to have a real entry soon, once I'm back on top of my schoolwork. I turned 22 yesterday, and I had a great, great day. And wrote. And now I am sitting in my room feeling tired, because I stayed up too late reading and watching TV.

I'm sitting and watching My Ghost Story, which is basically the lamest excuse for a paranormal show ever aside from Paranormal State, while I work on getting some personal stuff done. Photos of 'light orbs' do not substantiate a segment on a TV show, seriously.

Sorority report is in-progress still, and then I have to get this editing done on this manga for work. I'm kind of banning myself from updating the info post until I finish all of these things, but we'll see how well that turns out.

Christmas was pretty good, actually. I know it sounds immensely dramatic, but this is the first year since I was 15 that I didn't end up crying on Christmas or Christmas Eve. My mother is back on antidepressants, so while she's still crazy, she's not acting like a complete nutjob.

I'm currently getting excited for the New Year's Eve ball. It's hosted by the local con, and while it's not exactly the most intense party in town, it's nice to be able to dress up and hang out with friends for an evening. This year I'm going as Alice from Pandora Hearts, with my friend Shannon going as Jack. After that it's the slow slide back to school and daily life, which isn't very pleasant.

And... yeah. This is a blatant procrastination post, at this point, so I'm just going to roll off and actually accomplish something now.

This year, I'm trying to start something rather special and fun that everyone can get involved in. Have you ever seen those lovely photos of journals, open to pages that have been decorated and written on in pretty ways? It might just be a Tumblr thing, bu those are the pictures that inspired this idea.

Basically, over winter break, I'll go buy a Moleskine notebook and fill up the first page; notes, drawings, a letter, whatever, just something that I want to pass on and share with others. Then I will take the notebook, pop it into an envelope, and mail it to someone. That person will do their own page (or pages, depending) and then mail it to the next person on the list. The general idea is to create a round-robin journal; As it goes around, we can each take photos of the entry the person before us sent, and post them to a blog so everyone else in the round robin can see what's going on with the journal.

If someone wants to just do a one-on-one exchange with me, I'm up for that as well- but I can't buy a thousand notebooks, so We'll either have to split costs or figure something else out.

If you want to participate, just reply to this entry with the form below. Comments will be screened with the exception of the discussion thread, so you can feel safe sharing your mailing address.

Last week was not... spectacular, since I was at home with my parents all week. You know my home situation, so I'll spare you the details of that idiocy. But in short, I ended up being able to spend an amazing two days and one night with my best friend, where we painted winterberries, took some cosplay photos in the cold, planning our cosplays for spring 2012, and caught up on Pandora Hearts. I spent the rest of the week hanging out and doing my own thing, for the most part, and went to a party Saturday night where I had a little too much wine to drink but was able to sit down and be social for four or five hours with my extended circle of cosplaying friends. Sunday was spent preparing to come back up to school and driving back up to school, which is where I am right now, doing a miserable job of getting back into the routine of things by not going to my first Chinese class. (I have reasons for that, but it's not really important, so feel free to just... assume I'm a flagrant class ditcher like I am every other time I don't go to class.)

In other programming, I told you guys that I would tell you why I've been MIA for a year or so on LJ, so here we go. As you know, last November I was elected into the position of Vice President of Public Relations for my sorority. It was supposed to be a pretty easy job, but since our last three PR women had not done their jobs/had not held their positions for an entire term, I ended up overhauling the entire office and chapter's way of handling marketing and public relations. I set up every social networking page possible, designed engaging posters for every single event, planned out all kinds of tactics to get our name out on campus, set up a new system to allow girls to order fashionable and cool t-shirts with our chapter name on them to make us more visible on campus, and as a result of these marketing tactics (and the hard work of everyone else on council) we ended up having record numbers in our fall and spring recruitment, and have started gaining a better reputation on campus with both other Greek Life chapters and unaffiliated students.

Sandwiched between the two semesters of sorority stuff, I ended up going to China for two months, where I participated in an intensive Mandarin Chinese course and got to see parts of Shanghai and the Chinese countryside I had never really imagined I would be able to see. If you want to see the photos from my trip, you can check out my Flickr account. (Warning: There are a couple thousand pictures on there. I apologize to the world.) While I was there, I ended up rescuing a feral kitten, and raising $600 on Tumblr to bring him home to the United States with me. He now lives with a friend of mine in a nearby town, making trouble and being loved to pieces. My time in Shanghai has inspired me, though, and I'm working on the idea of creating an organization to promote spay/vaccinate/release programs in China for feral animals, and possibly create an animal shelter system in Shanghai in the future.

Right now, I'm working as a marketing intern for the campus activities office at my University, and as an editor in a localizing team for Digital Manga Publishers. I'm trying to get a third job to cover more expenses and start saving up to move once I graduate, but it's really hard to get any kind of position in a college town. I'm looking at applying to Amazon and Apple when I'm out of school, but Amazon looks like a far more likely option. I'm looking at graduating in the fall or summer of 2012.

Tonight is my last night as a council member for my sorority, and I'll be passing the circlet of PR on to the next girl. I think that she'll do a good job with it, and hopefully carry on everything that I started. Once I'm back in my normal place, though, I'm still not quite sure what I'll be doing with my time. Along with one of my sorority sisters, I'm starting an organization on campus called the Alliance of Students with Learning Disabilities to help promote education and advocacy for members of the campus community who have LDs. I want to promote awareness of LDs on campus and try to petition for more representation of the LD student population, including things like removing discriminatory language from syllabi and course introductions, and moving the school's Disability Services office to a more central and handicap-accessible location on campus.

Right now, though, I need to try and sort things out for finals. Not really sure what I'm doing, but I am attempting to put my to-do list together so I have an idea of what I need to do in exact terms instead of letting myself wander around accomplishing nothing.

Oh, and I'm trying to get in shape. I hope to be in damn good form by April (Sakuracon, whoo) so I can pull off Fou and Greed!Ling with flying colors. More on that later, though, I guess.

If you have any questions about anything or are just curious about what happened when, feel free to ask. I wrote this in my Monday morning daze, so I'm sure I missed something or managed to be excessively vague somewhere.

I have Christmas cards with kittens on them. I would like to send them to you, my friends. Please give me your addresses and preferred name in the comments here and I will send you a card this lovely holiday season.

Comments are screened to keep you safe from internet stalkers and ninja assassins.

I was freaking out quite a bit when I did it, but I've backed everything up and put it on a backup page, so now I just have a place to keep it while this journal serves as a continuation. It feels like I'm free from all of the things that were contained in all of those old posts.

Before the end of the week, I'll be posting up a new intro post/something about why I disappeared for the last year or so. And tonight I'll be posting my Christmas card post again, so you can reply if you want to.